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Oh, the Games we Play

I think everyone will agree with me when I say that we all live in a playing field.

When we were little, there is nothing more valuable than the games we play–hide and seek, tag, you name it. We can’t wait for the bell to ring just so we can go out in the playground for a whole session of swings and slippery dips. Then, throughout puberty, we spend hours of time playing video games–Mario Brothers, Pacman, Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, Wii. Every year, it seems there are always new games introduced that will never fail to hook us to addiction.

And it doesn’t end there. When we’ve had enough of these online games and whatnots, we turn on the TV waiting for the next season of Games of Thrones, if not, we go to the movies to watch the Hunger Games.

Everywhere we look, there is always something suggesting that we have to play the game.

Now, as you would have guessed, this is the part where I start talking about relationships and ranting about games adult people play.

A few nights ago, I was talking to a friend on the phone, and I was telling him how it seems so unfair that some people can demand so much out of someone and they can have it all. Meanwhile, here I am, just wanting the guy I like to like me back, without conditions, without demands, and I can’t have even a quarter of what I am asking for.

And this friend just started talking about how men are hunters and how they like a good challenge. He told me not to be an easy prey–to play the game, to play hard to get, to not initiate contact, to wait for the guy to ask me out.

He told me that when a guy likes you, he will take the step, he will act upon it.

Well, bullshit to that!

I think women who have the courage to tell the guy they like how they feel is everything but an easy prey. Why is the world so patriarchal that it denies women privileges that men so likely take for granted?

I find it unfair how they always say “when a guy likes you, he will take the step and he will act upon it.” Why can’t a girl take the step and act upon it when she likes someone?

Why do I have to play hard to get? Why can’t it be as simple as “you like me, and I like you, let’s stop pretending, spare me the drama, and get over it!”

The real tragedy lies when a woman is brave enough to actually tell the guy she likes about her feelings. The tragedy does not come with the rejection that is just waiting to happen. It comes from the reality that when a woman is actually man enough to grow some balls, she is seen as borderline desperate, rather crazy, straight easy, less desirable.

Please, cut us some slack! It is not desperation or insanity that drives us to refuse to play games. We’ve been playing games since childhood and we can only take as much.

Men are hunters, blah blah blah. Does it ever occur to you that women hunt too?